Tuesday, July 22, 2014

"Everything of importance has been seen by someone who didn't discover it," said Einstein .....

.... which explains how former Yahoo CEO and x-Warner Brothers Hollywood Mogul of 24 years, Terry Semel, never saw the obvious that was hiding in plain sight.Nor was he any poorer for leading the company into the ditch: "In April 2001, Semel was granted stock options with an SEC Fair Value of over $110 million as a bonus to join Yahoo. On March 10, 2004 Semel was granted options to purchase Yahoo stock worth $120 million at an exercise price of $41.70 ( the low closing price for 2004 was $41.65). Within a month that stock was trading at $56.00, making him a profit of $50 million on that grant alone. Over the past three years Semel sold 18.1 million of his stock options for a gain of $450 million. He maintains another 18.6 million unexercised stock options.But that's not all. According to Semel's Wiki page, "After joining Yahoo, company founders Jerry Yang and David Filo suggested he look at buying Google, whose founders looked up Yahoo's inventors. Semel had dinner with Larry Page and Sergey Brin, asking them what their business was with Yahoo paying only $7 million annually as its biggest licensor of Google search technology. So Semel proposed to buy Google. They replied that they wanted $1 billion and didn't want to sell. Semel said he'd think about the price. Another dinner and Semel agreed to the $1 billion. Larry Page and Sergey Brin replied that they wanted $3 billion and didn't want to sell."

Now fast forward to 2014, with a millennial in charge unencumbered by non-hands-on-digital thinking...

"In today's digital era, technology has developed and changed the landscape of how many people watch movies and TV," David Glasser, chief operating officer of Weinstein, said in the statement. "Our partnership with Yahoo has allowed us to adapt and expand our reach to limitless audiences."

Yahoo is extending its reach in video content with the early release of a full-length film. The largest U.S. web portal will show "One Chance," a movie from Weinstein Co., on its Yahoo Screen service this fall, the companies said...\